In the parallel world where bonobos* developed into those that took over the earth with the help of technology, they never insisted on an absolute nature of time in the first place. Einstein came along and discovered that since we use light as the most basic measurement tool, there should be a certain relativity. They experimented and confirmed that proposal. It was useful, too, and interesting, and nobody called relativity evil, so nobody made defensively a dogma out of it either. Bonobos accepted that relativity can be the emergent symmetry of an Einstein ether in case it is not fundamental all the way.

In bonobo world, they quickly advanced quantum mechanics and resolved the EPR paradox, because dogma did not hold them back, and thus they held it much more likely that relativity is fundamental all the way down! Yes, they were suspecting that relativity is fundamental for much more convincing reasons than the misinterpretations of experiments in chimpanzee world, however, the bonobos did still not make a religious belief out of it, because some bonobos have intriguing emergent relativity scenarios. In bonobo world, it was never career suicide to mention that faster than light particles could perhaps be possible and would not time travel or do any such nonsense if for example there is an Einstein ether in a larger bulk space. After all, we have recently proven yet again that we do reside inside a sort of Einstein ether.

Then one day, OPERA had measurements that clearly indicated faster than light neutrinos with high significance. The bonobos did look very carefully at the results, because they suspect that relativity is a truly fundamental symmetry. So they looked at it carefully and with strong suspicions about that these superluminal effects are merely a systematic error. But it turned out that they not only confirmed it once more but moreover found that also ICARUS and all the various neutrino experiments together indicate that the relevant excitations seem to initially jump out of the Einstein ether with huge velocities and then travel as usual after falling back into it, so there would be no energy loss from superluminal movement in the ether. This was intriguing and refuted some bonobos' refutations and so of course they looked yet closer into the experiment; of course they repeated it in different ways and checked everything double and triple.

In bobonbo world, they by now know what is really going on. My guess is, they all know now that the FTL particles were a systematic error. Sadly, this here is not bonobo world, this is worse-than-chimpanzee world. Here, first absolute time was dogma, then fundamental relativity became dogma. Here, scientists primarily fight each other for influence and fame instead of trying to understand the world and perhaps improve it. Here, OPERA’s finding was immediately distorted and misrepresented almost 100% of the time especially by science bloggers, who are worse than corporate media, which were the worst before bloggers came along.

Here in worse-than-chimpanzee world, every wrong “refutation” of the OPERA result is blown out of proportion in the name of "good science", thus supporting anti science. Here, one of the OPERA apes, Antonio Ereditato, was just pressured to resign his position, apparently because it dared to be too much of a bonobo, or perhaps other reasons – we will never know – you can never know what is actually going on in worse-than-chimpanzee world, because nothing ever is told without substantial distortions. And this is why in bonobo world, science is trusted and trustworthy, while here in worse-than-chimpanzee world, you are excused for and perhaps even should wonder if the FTL neutrinos are real and it is just that finally one of the wrong explanations for why they are a systematic error has stuck because it fits well enough.

Here in this world, science is not trusted anymore. Scientists distort even this fact and claim that worse-than-chimps distrust science because they are stupid monkeys. Actually though, it is just that more and more worse-than-chimps simply realize that they do reside in a worse-than-chimpanzee world.

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* I mean bonobos instead of the worse-then-chimps ancestors of humans. I say "worse-than" to take into account that it was less the initial difference rather than macro evolution that made us this way, which actually would have also likely ensured that bonobo-world looks much like worse-than-chimp world, but I nevertheless allow myself this artistic freedom to distort science, because after all, this is Science2.0 and we have already plenty of much worse pseusoscience here and nobody seems to mind.

Ahhh - yes, of course, that is it, what else would it be? There are some apes that don't believe in gravity, so they swing without fear from tree to tree, and so all scientists are to be condemned and my name is Bonzo. I hoped that was obvious.

Sascha, since you have quoted from “The Nature of the Physical World” by A.S.Eddington, I think you will enjoy this:

“One of our ancestors, taking arboreal exercise in the forest, failed to reach the bough intended and his hand closed on nothingness. The accident might well occasion philosophical reflections on the distinctions of substance and void – to say nothing of the phenomenon of gravity. However that may be, his descendants to this day have come to be endowed with an immense respect for substance arising we know not how or why”.

He was using this to point up our natural materialism, or as I would put it, our sense of the PRIMACY of matter.

I think bonobo's would have much higher medical and biologically spending, no war spending, and so probably a lot less spending on physics research. AIDs and Cancer would have been cured but there wouldn't have made a single anti-proton, in there history, let along a 70 years of particle accelerators given in debt to physicists for inventing the nuclear bomb.

"also ICARUS and all the various neutrino experiments together indicate that the relevant excitations seem to initially jump out of the Einstein ether with huge velocities and then travel as usual after falling back into it, so there would be no energy loss from superluminal movement in the ether."
Wow. Are you still chasing this stuff? Or is this your verson of an April joke?

Possibly I am not getting that you are actually making a sniding remark, but in case there should be any genuine misunderstanding: This post is not meant to be funny, not one bit. It isn't even the first of April yet.

Barry: that's You owe Nature a Death, as they used to say in Old German. I recently noticed that German common law abstracts the debt from the act of transferring goods. So one might say, with Plato, you owe Nature an Idea, or the keys to a bindery, in computer language. Many people have thought there can be no immortality except in truth, which makes some sense of how unacknowledged truths seem to haunt us.

For the record: the speed of light in glass, with a density comparable to rock, is about two-thirds of the theoretical maximum. So the neutrino is certainly behaving like a soliton, but that's still a rough analogy.

I was at a conference a week ago and a whole bunch of people who have no interest at all in, and downright contempt for, western religion positively gushed over times they had met him - and every time they referenced meeting him (and they referenced it a lot), they said 'his holiness'. Not sure why that guy gets such a free pass in the science community.

Well let me spell it out for you, why the guy gets a free pass from pseudo progressives, fashionably pretend secular people, wannabe sciency new atheists and the like: Being naive and having swallowed anti-Chinese propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

I thought most people were familiar with bonobos - we have at least one who posts here. Bonobos are the hippy dreamers of the primate world and it requires a willing suspension of disbelief worthy of Coleridge himself to imagine them doing anything useful at all. Our side of the family tree are nasty, deceptive, competitive and ruthless. But it does lead to surly cooperation.

The research that I have seen points toward them being at least as able as chimps, probably more when it comes to language and cooperation. It was how the cooky crumbled that we (you know, neglecting neanderthal interbreeding and all that) went all techno and not them.

I am surprised that no one seems to be impressed that neutrinos are travelling at the speed of light through SOLID ROCK while LIGHT can only achieve this speed in a vacuum! So , has anyone thought maybe neutrinos in a vacuum travel a wee faster???? ( and yes, I know about relativity supposedly precluding this ..but experimentation rules!) in any case, the expression should be the 'speed of neutrino' rather than 'speed of light'- and as aside I agree with your post - Professor Ereditato did the honorable thing by reporting his results after their investigation- now, if someone else gets the same result they will chuck it to the waste bin- which has happen in the past with other experiments (in different areas of science) and caused science to be delayed